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Math Against Begich in Alaska

Much like the math wasn’t in favor of the GOP in Virginia, the math isn’t looking good for Senator Begich (D).

Numbers released by Alaska elections officials Wednesday morning show that incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich would have to win a substantial majority of the uncounted absentee and other outstanding ballots in his race against Republican Dan Sullivan — a prospect that even one of Begich’s close allies acknowledged was unlikely.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday, Sullivan led Begich by about 8,000 votes.

State elections officials said there were nearly 24,000 uncounted absentee and early votes, which won’t be tallied until next week. There are also 13,804 absentee ballots that voters had requested but not yet returned to the state, though it was unclear how many of those would ultimately end up being counted.

Begich trailed last time by 3,000 votes before winning but the hole seems to deep this time. Democrats now will have to focus on Louisiana’s runoff where the GOP is favored unless this stumping motivates democrats in the state to turnout in mass numbers because the turnout for the December runoff is going to be a super low amount of voters.